postcards

postcards intends to suggest that short and pithy form of communication used increasingly among overworked women writers we know who need to express something urgently but can't stop to write a longer letter. Because we have limited space but unlimited desire for dialogue, please contain your comments by typing them on a standard-size postcard. We are eager to hear from women poets and scholars who wish to address issues relevant to our concerns. Sometimes, we may also excerpt from longer letters, as in the case of Dodie Bellamy's comment below:

"I still feel some confusion over the issue of dividing women's writing into the categories of avant-garde and non-avant-garde, and supporting only one side of what seems to be a rather arbitrary division. Perhaps this is why women don't seem to be accomplishing as much as they should--they're always fragmenting into little groups which don't give support to those outside the group, and consequently never achieve a position of significant power. But then, I'm also increasingly disillusioned with writing that is so overtly feminist that politics swallow experience."

--Dodie Bellamy

Reply from Frances Jaffer:

We're trying to fill a gap, not create a split. Fragmentation, yes, of course that's the problem. As I wrote in our first issue, the absence of formal experiment, particularly in poetry, in feminist literary journals, is almost total. It's our hope and intention that HOW(ever) may begin to fill this strange gap, or at least point the way. If we're successful, it's possible that in the future there will be feminist magazines in which experimentalist and more formally traditional writing will be published together; and there will be experimentalist magazines, not specifically feminist, in which women writers will feel moved and welcomed to write from a context whose intentions include evident feminist awareness.